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Wednesday, January 22, 2014

This is not the revolution you think it is. Studio 60 and the structure of domination.

The 2006 pilot of the television series Studio 60 on the
Sunset Strip lays out a bold and promising premise.It purports to be laying the foundation for a
revolutionary show-within-a-show.It
portends to be introducing a dynamic, countercultural piece of media, uniquely
poised to succeed at authenticity where others fail, to hijack the system and
turn it on its head.“This show is
going to be daringly different,” it promises.

Unfortunately, this promissory bravado seems to operate
under the delusion that revolution can occur without any significant change to
the superstructure.The false premise
that we can function under the same systems and get different results underlies
the entire plot.So while the show seems
to promise revolution and resistance, it may be more accurately providing mere
coping.As Garnam pointed out, “It is …
a question of recognizing the systemic constraints within which [people]
construct their forms of cultural coping and how unemancipative these can
be.”He criticized the “tendency of
cultural studies to validate all and every popular culture practice as
resistance – in its desire to avoid being tarred and feathered with an elitist
brush – [as being] profoundly damaging to its political project.”[1]

Studio 60, both as a show and as a show within a show, are
problematically depicted as being emancipatory and resistive, when neither
actually challenge the structure of domination they function under.Rather, because of the character of Jordan
McDeere, the new president of the fictional NBS network, they are simply going
to play the same game over again with a keener instinct for navigating audience
work[2] to
their benefit and a higher tolerance for risk of aspersion. But as Garnam
pointed out “little dent will be made in domination if… nothing is done about
processes of economic development,” and “no empowerment will mean much unless
it is accompanied by a massive shift in control of economic resources.”Studio 60 plays at a façade of empowerment
and anti-domination without so much a second glance at the power structure of
the media industry.

Inasmuch as her character seems constantly to be
holistically strategizing, Jordan McDeere presents an interesting paradox.She seems unusually adept at wielding what
Garnam called “Corporate Power”, “power exercised by economic agents within
these overall structural constraints, but where the ownership or control of
resources provides some room for intentional strategic manouvre.”[3]
Her resources in this case tend to be private information about Matt Albie and
Danny Tripp’s private and professional lives, as well as better forecasting of
the response to Wes Mendell’s live breakdown than her peers.The way the episode is structured, Jordan’s
heightened understanding of the functionality of the “free lunch”, “to whet the
prospective audience member’s appetites and thus (1) attract and keep them
attending the program…; (2) cultivate a mood conducive to favorable reaction to
the advertisers’ explicit and implicit messages” allows her to see potential
controversy and media buzz as a fiscal asset to her company.But it is very clear that she is not
welcoming provocative content as a form of resistance or empowerment, but as an
economically minded strategy to “produce audiences to sell to the
advertisers.”(Smythe)

Her character seems to have grasped that Wes Mendell’s
breakdown will have suggested to media consumers that they have a problem, and
that by altering the content and direction of the show in this way she is
promising a fix to that problem.It’s an
effective response based on Smythe’s description of advertising and audience
work, “Customers do not buy things, they buy tools to solve problems… The nature
of the work done by audience power thus seems to be to the advertising free
lunch combination of sensory stimuli to determine whether (s)he has the
“problem” the advertiser is posing, [and] (2) is aware that there is a class of
commodities which, if purchased and used will “solve” that problem… [and](3)
ought to add brand x of that class of commodities to the mental or physical
shopping list.”

So while Jordan may on some level appear to be
countercultural or revolutionary, she is really just upholding the same
superstructure more effectively and with a better understanding of its
mechanics than her more outwardly dominating, unflatteringly depicted peers.This revolution she is orchestrating is just
a flashy free lunch.

[1]
Garnam, Nicholas. Political Economy and Cultural Studies: Reconciliation or Divorce? March 1993(?)